---
It had always been easy for him to vanish — not physically, but emotionally. He could be there, right in front of someone, and still be nowhere at all. A smile, a nod, a few well-placed words, and people believed what they needed to. That he cared. That he was present. That they mattered.
And maybe they did. In moments. In fragments.
But moments were slippery things.
He scrolled through his messages like someone flipping through memories they weren't ready to keep. Some unread. Some unanswered. Some never sent. One name stood out — a thread that felt warmer than the others. Older. Safer. Maybe too safe.
He didn't open it.
Instead, he tapped on another name. One that wasn't supposed to mean much, but did.
Typing...
Then deleting.
Then typing again.
It wasn't what he wanted to say. It never was. But it was what he needed to say to keep the balance.
> "You seemed off yesterday. Everything okay?"
He hit send. Simple. Clean. Empty.
It would buy time.
It always did.
---
Elsewhere
Rain clung to the edge of the dormitory roof, sliding down in long, silent streaks. Inside, she stared at her phone, jaw tight. Not angry. Not hurt. Just... aware.
He had pulled back again.
Not enough to accuse him of anything — just enough to make her question herself. It was always that kind of silence. The slow kind. The intentional kind.
She typed something back, paused, then erased it.
No. Not yet.
---
Across Campus
Leaning against a vending machine, Dheeran flipped his notebook closed. His expression was unreadable, except for the faint crease between his brows — the kind he wore when he was watching too closely.
"You ghosted her again," he said without looking up.
The boy standing next to him — the one who always looked like he was halfway between sincerity and strategy — didn't answer at first.
"She's fine," he muttered finally.
"You sure?" Dheeran asked. "Because you've been spinning plates, and one of them's starting to wobble."
He smirked but said nothing. Dheeran was too perceptive for his own good. Maybe that's why he kept him close — a friend who noticed just enough to be useful, but not enough to be dangerous.
Still, he didn't deny it. There wasn't much point.
---
Later That Night
In the dim light of his room, he sat cross-legged on his bed, laptop open, music low. A lo-fi playlist blurred into background noise, barely heard beneath the hum of his thoughts.
Two open chats again. One asked nothing, just waited. The other had left him on read.
His thumb hovered over the screen, but he didn't type.
Instead, his eyes drifted to the edge of his desk — where a photo had been quietly slipped into the corner of the mirror. A younger version of himself. Smiling. Carefree. Standing between two girls — one beaming, the other barely smiling but looking straight at the camera, like she saw something no one else did.
That photo wasn't meant to still be there. He had tried to move on from that day.
But memories had a way of becoming props.
You placed them where they'd hurt the least.
---
Somewhere Far From Him
A hand clutched a worn-out journal, pages filled with looping handwriting and unsent letters. She flipped through them absently, stopping at one that started with his name.
She didn't read it. She didn't need to. She had written it three months ago.
He hadn't changed.
But something had.
Maybe it was her.
---
Back to Him
He wrote a new message — not to either of them. To someone else.
A new character. A wildcard.
> "Are you still up?"
The reply came instantly.
> "Thought you'd never ask."
A smirk pulled at his lips. Not from pleasure. From habit.
Balance, after all, was never just about keeping things steady.
Sometimes, it was about knowing when to shift the weight — and who would catch it when the others couldn't.
---